Bolomusu
by Charles Bhepin
Summary: aka The Nuclear Tank Maiden Stories.
1. Daybreak

**_Daybreak_**

* * *

 _The Enemy are innumerable. Literally._

 _My awareness of the battlespace is clouded by both electronic and literal fog. I cannot make a meaningful estimate of their numbers. I simply know that if left unchecked they are more than enough to destroy the city of Landing and its six million people. This is not the sort of battle for which I have been designed._

 _I am a Bolo, Model XXXIV, of the Resurgent class, Indrani Pattern, R-042-MCL of the Line. The Bolo named "Michelangelo". I am forty thousand tons of duralloy, weapons, and power, built to defeat all possible enemies of Mankind._

 _For two thousand years that Humanity has been in space, we Bolos have been there, serving as their sword and shield, and not once have we betrayed that trust, not once have we faltered, and not once did we ever quit. We have served them well against the Deng, the Xkydap, the Quern, the Malach, and the Axorc, and many many more other alien opponents, and we grew with them. It is fair to say the human civilization cannot be what it is without the Bolo, as much as they improved us with advances in psychotronics and weapons and defensive technology, so does their society florish with the safety we provide and the benefits of research into energy cores and supercomputing artificial intelligence and all the necessary gravity control required to allow our bulk to function at speed within the gravity well._

 _But in the dawn of the 30th century we finally faced an alien foe that we could not overcome by sheer machine speed of thought and technological superiority._

 _The Empire of Melcon, an alien race with a canid appearance, with a strong clan and caste-based society, weapons technology slightly inferior to our own but masters of stealth and bioengineering, a_ _nd with history, territory and industrial might several times stronger than the Concordiat of Man._

 _This was the Final War, the end of all wars, for in its pursuit both powers were destroyed and their people driven to the very brink of extinction._ _As the Melconian Empire blotted out Terra and Bolo Prime on Luna with a world-burner, we too burned Melcon. We called it Plan Ragnarok, and whatever the Melcon name for it, their plan was similarly as thorough and without mercy._

 _It is the one shame in the annals of the Bolo Brigade that we Bolos became the instruments of mass slaughter, we put to the torch thousands of worlds, and when our world-burners ran out, we Bolos had to manually wipe clean worlds with our Hellbores tuned to sustained fire mode. A megaton-range bolt every .8 seconds could, with grid-like efficiency, could literally erase cities and their populations right off the surface of a planet. We were murderers, slaughterers of the innocent – but the Final War was that sort of war. What we did to them, at Trakhal and Utist, they were doing the same at Chatres, at New Tokyo; it was a war of total annihilation, where the only victory could be the utter destruction of the other. It was a race to see who would run out of worlds first._

 _I have not personally fought in the Final War, I was built long after, but I imagine the sight would be similar to today. Hellbore fire rain from the heavens, and I strengthen and spread my battlescreen to deflect the inbound storm. Nuclear fireballs bloom in my passing, as I vigorously maneuver, my bulk reacting with inconceivable grace, something massing tens of thousands of tons should not be capable of jinking at over one hundred kilometers an hour. The weapon that thinks, that is mankind's greatest creation. That is the Bolo._

 _My return fire is sporadic. My objective is not to kill the Enemy. No, there is too many. Somehow they are capable of spoofing my targeting. My main guns, 210-centimeter Hellbores with firepower equivalent to 5.25 megatons of TNT per second, are useless here. Each Bolo could serve as an anti-orbital platform with an effective range of over 35,000 kilometers past high orbit, and my main guns were identical to those carried by battlecruisers, but the Enemy is simply too close to hit or clustering over civilian areas where any attempt to use my Hellbores would lead to mass deaths of the people I exist to protect._

 _My objective now is merely to survive, to draw their fire, in order that the civilians behind me could live for just that much longer and get to safety inside shelters. As a plasma strike arriving at seventy percent the speed of light brushes through my battle screen and impacts against my warhull, my damage control sensors flare with the equivalent of pain._

 _My Commander, William Jacks Martini-Hawthorne winces in turn. We share the totality of our existence in the Bolo Direct Neural Interface, combining the logical mind of the Bolo supercomputer with the ineffable intuitive capacities of the human mind, creating something much more than the sum of either._

"Things were supposed to be better. _We_ were supposed to be better!" _William hisses._ "Not like this… we can't let it end like this!"

-x-

 _I was built by the Indrani Republic, a society born of Operation Seed Corn, which was an attempt to flee the fighting with a colony population in the hopes that even though Human and Melcon civilization would surely die, at least humanity itself would not go completely extinct. And so we fled, and behind us a trillion souls on tens of thousands of worlds died screaming into the Long Night._

 _Two hundred years have passed since then. What was merely twenty thousand became millions, became billions, and their industrial infrastructure eventually could build Bolos like me. Sixty-four years ago, the Republic sent out an expedition fleet, to find out if there are any remaining remnants of humanity, if there remained enough of Melcon to keep prosecuting the Final War, and as we set out in a fleet of superdreadnoughts and escorts and whole regiments of Bolos, fifty percent secure in our might and fifty percent apprehensive of what we might find._

 _We found in our travels murdered world after murdered world. Here, one that showed signs of the atmosphere being ignited by a world-burner, there killed through orbital bombardment, another though the tell-tale signs of ground-level glassing via Hellbores, another through some form of virulent superplague that rotted everything organic,_ _and some with nothing left to identify if they had ever been owned by Human or Melcon. Shattered hulks of Bolos and their equivalent Melcon Battlers littered the battlefields like massive headstones for the murdered millions._

 _We found here and there, small communities fearful of the night sky. Some Human, some Melcon, stuck in almost a pre-industrial age, too afraid to light up with life signs that can be seen from orbit or to use radios. There was no discussion whether or not we should destroy the Melcon remnants to finish them off, to prosecute the Final War was entirely in our hands, and to murder the defenseless would tarnish our honor. We left them be. We marked their locations in our maps, and left nothing in our passing that might hint to others there would be survivors there._

 _They live in terror, but also they live in peace. That was enough, we had no right to disturb them._

 _Hundreds of lightyears we ventured forth, and found most of the galactic arm a graveyard. It took us three years to cross Perseus Arm, most of that time the crew spent in coldsleep, and jump after jump hundreds of dead worlds became thousands._

 _The young soldiers of the Republic, ready and eager to find something to test themselves against, found their lust of battle sapped with every dead world. The Final War was not a glorious war. This was the end point of two powers who could not be checked except by each other, two rivals unwilling to allow the other to exist. They were shaken by the proof of just how low their forebears had fallen. The honor of the Dinochrome Brigade was tarnished forever. Human or Melcon, whoever and however far from the Final War they might have been born, if they looked in the mirror they would find a face of a mass murderer._

 _Buried inside every human, ever Melcon, every Bolo, is that same capacity for genocide._

"The only reason we're out here is to find out if there could still be threats against Indrani. And that's fine! It's all well and good to defend our own!" _William's grandfather, Anson Hawthorne, and commander of the Bolo XXIV A-001-SBR "Sabre" of the Line, remarked in his memoirs,_ "But after all this… do we have a right to call ourselves protectors? To cry out for revenge?! War will not make us better. Such arrogance! My arrogance!

"I've grown up hearing about great-great-grandmother Maneka and Bolo LZY "Lazarus", one Bolo fighting off an entire Melcon combat group, who would have killed us all without mercy. I thought it would be good in itself if we simply had the magnanimity not to destroy any Melcon population we encountered. The Melcon were monsters. But the Concordiat were monsters too.

"Such monstrosity. The Concordiat had at least three thousand worlds, the Melconian Empire had between three to five times that. We're passed Concordiat territory and deep into Melcon territory, and every world we've passed is a burnt-out husk. If there ever was a sin that could taint the souls of all those born after, it is this! We have no right to feel proud about our weapons or our technology anymore.

"Mercy? Mercy, hah! It is nothing to be called the grace of the victor. From now on it should be the basest obligation! For what we have done there can be no forgiveness."

-x-

 _The one thing we could never defeat –_

 _The one planet against which all the might of Indrani could not avail itself against –_

 _We found, deep inside Melconian space, in the world that was once known as Ishark and now known as Ararat, a Union in which Humans and Melcons lived in peace, even adopted into each other's clans, and though fearing the arrival of some old fragment of Melcon or the Concordiat to crush all that they had slowly, painfully regained, they did not fear to look up at the stars. Like our Republic, they had created an industrial base sufficient to launch interstellar craft, but much inferior due to much more limited colony assets compared to our Operation Seed Corn._

 _In pitiful numbers they arranged their fleet of small ships in front of ours, one which surely looked like one that was ready to burn worlds. We certainly had the capability for it._

 _We opened communications, and in my databanks I often refer to that conversation with the Speaker Emeritus of the Union of Ararat's Parliament, Bolo XXXIII/D-1097-SHV, "Shiva". One of the veterans of the Final War, one of the instruments of Plan Ragnarok, personally responsible for burning hundreds of worlds and populations, and also their main architect of peace. A part of us felt that such a killer had no right to still exist, and at the same time utter admiration that even a Bolo could defy its own nature._

 _Within Ararat we saw the end of the Final War. It was time at last for peace._

 _Though Indrani and Ararat were very distant from each other, swiftly we entered into an alliance. Ararat must be defended. It is the jewel of the galaxy, it must stand as an example, so that the Final War could truly end. Remnants of Concordiat and Melcon needed their example to be able to put side the hatred and live, even if not as friends, then at least in peace. It was time at last to stop fighting._

 _Fifty-one years have passed since Contact. Indrani culture too had to confront its own unconscious indoctrination painting all Melcon as evil, and instead had to begin to see Melcon as equally innocent of their ancestor's sins as we were of our sins against the Melcon population. We could not judge them without judging ourselves._

-x-

 _And now – Ararat._

 _Ararat is under attack._

 _For while Humans and Melcon might finally have begun to forgive each other, it is clear the galaxy has not forgiven us._

 _The sky broke open, at 4:40:04 AM (Perez Local) and from an impossible void poured out what we could only identify as impossible... monsters. Creatures neither machine nor biological, comparatively tiny things that could strike with the force of Bolo-scale weaponry. Creatures formed of hatred and spite made manifest, creatures that could prove that yes, even Bolos had a soul, because even deep in our machine selves we could feel the quivering truth of their boundless burning hate._

 _A trillion souls crying out in anguish, a trillion souls screaming in pain, a trillion souls crying out –_ _ **avenge us! Kill for us! Die for us!**_

 _So many of our defenders died in the opening salvo, locked up by that Hateful Truth, paralyzed by the notion that even they, so far removed from their forebears who fought in the Final War, perhaps they even had no right to live and be so pathetically content over the graves of the massacred._

 _Barely was I able to raise my battle screen._

 _Ghosts are unscientific. But if ever there was a grudge, a resentment that goes beyond reason and breaking through into reality, it would be the unmatched atrocities committed in the Final War. No, we had little trouble accepting the legitimacy of their arrival. We could only fight to defend the innocents they wanted to murder in service of that all-consuming anger._

 _Their profane weaponry felt real enough against my battle screen. Fusion plasma beams were deflected, lasers were absorbed, and railgun slugs were shredded into subatomic particles. Buildings, and people, lacking this defensive energy field, how they burned!_

 _That moment we were paralyzed, how many died because of our weakness?! Our arrogance – our reliance on advanced technology, the hubris of believing that anything that dared approach the orbit of Ararat existed only with our permission._

 _Bolo Shiva was old, and damaged, and sinful, and yet he could still move. He had so many to protect. And the Enemy seemed to take great pleasure in tearing him apart. A Mark XXXIII Bolo such as him was the pinnacle of Concordiat technology, a supertank that could lay waste to a world, thirty-two thousand tons of directed violence with internal contra-grav that could even allow him to_ _ **fly**_ _at five hundred kilometers per hour. A member of the horribly experienced world killers of the XLIII Legion, he had not survived the Final War, but even then forty years later reactivated at minimal capabilities with a Bolo's nanite self-repair system._

 _Yet even without a functioning reactor, a Bolo's hull was capable of leeching energy from sunlight. Over forty years of silence, his capacitors had absorbed enough to power move and fire a Hellbore. That would have been enough to destroy the Melconian transports arriving on Ararat, driven there by their own malfunctioning life support. As a Bolo, it should have been his duty to kill them to ensure that the equally desperate humans who had settled the world some years ago would be safe._

 _Shiva was the Bolo to fire the last shot of the Final War, and the first to refuse to fire the shot that would re-ignite it._

 _The Enemy surgically blasted apart his triple 200cm Hellbore turrets, and his Infinite Repeaters were ripped out of their sockets. Swarms of spider-like creatures with slick black chitin and bloody grins poured into the Mk XXXIII Bolo, and popped as his internal disruptor fields tried to protect his inside, but in the end to no avail as they simply swarmed until his capacitors drained._

 _They peeled apart his durachome armor, and scampered into his command center. They killed his commander, slicing Alice Devereaux into bloody ribbons, and broke through into his personality center. A two meter ball of psychotronics, that is a Bolo. Not its warhull, not its fearsome weapons, but that intelligence so devoted to humanity and the ideals of chivalry._

 _Bolo Shiva died screaming._

 _But even in his torturous death, he bought us enough time to rally. Enough time to warn the civilians to enter the shelters. Enough time to wake up and remember – our lives are owed to the living, not the dead._

 _Enough time for myself and my commander to hope to emulate his sacrifice._

 _-x-_

 _Colonel Anson Hawthorne also wrote:_

 _"_ To fight and prevail against insurmountable odds is not romantic. I once thought it would be a glorious way to die in emulation of my great-grandmother and Bolo Lazarus' battle, but I see now that they would prefer never to be heroes at all. They fought because it was their duty. A real soldier hopes that we should never have to be in that situation. A savior cannot exist without those who need to be saved."

 _Yet every moment I keep them occupied, the fewer weapons are directed at the civilians behind me. My commander and I will die here, there is no hope for us. There is no glory here._

 _But I am satisfied._

 _A gigantic creature, approximately one thousand seven hundred tons and with a simian form clambers up the side of my warhull. It lacks legs, but instead pushes forward on a tail made of thick, exposed bones of its spinal column. Its face is a faintly avian bone mask, and its cranium an open bowl. Seated inside its skull is a young woman clad in a tight sheer robe. Her pallor is corpselike, her eyes literally glow red with hate. And on the creature's back, are twinned Hellbore turrets that are now aimed to pierce though the rents in my armor and into my personality center._

"Huh. Pretty. Like some sort of… Hellbore Princess?" _murmurs my commander. He lets out a strangled little laugh._ "Guess this is it, old boy. See you in the other side."

"It was a pleasure to have known you, commander," _I respond._

 _This is a good death._

Bwongg.

 _And then, inexplicably, another young woman jumps into our field of view to punch the Hellbore Princess in the face._

 _And even more inexplicably, instead of the Hellbore Princess falling off out of her perch, the whole beast topples over the side of my warhull._

 _The new arrival jumps to follow them. She wears an unfamiliar power frame, more akin to industrial loaders than power armor, but on her back are mounted three turrets on articulating barbettes that have the energy signature of 200cm Hellbores._

 _That young woman is emitting a Bolo IFF._

 _-x-_

* * *

 _-x-_

First, I will presume you're familiar with Kantai Collection and the whole concept of spirits of warships incarnated back into human forms to fight Abyssals, and Keith Laumer's Bolos and their role in the Concordiat of Man and the Final War.

Now, just simply turning the whole concept of shipgirls space scifi would work, but oddly enough there is much more reason for the whole demon-undead-ship-thing to exist in the Boloverse than just an echo of WW2 grudges as in Kancolle, because to quote an old post of mine -

 _However, for all the stories that mankind tells and are inspired by to power the legends, when it comes to Mystery there really isn't going to be as big of an event as the Final War. All the stories of Man, all the stories of Melcon, gone in the nuclear fires that only the Bolo survives. The total erasure of civilizations - all their people, their relics, their histories, their very worlds, forever removed from the face and memory of the galaxy. So what if Gaea is a thing? Bolos have participated in the slaughter of tens of thousands of planets and near a trillion souls!_

 _And then, in the aftermath, the survivors and the alien races that come after, will only be able to speak the name 'Bolo' with dread and wonder. Even future cybernetic races will trace their ancestry to the Bolo. They are Progenitors too._

 _The distillation of that legend has no choice but to be fucking powerful. In that timeline, every other legend pales in comparison. King Arthur, Gilgamesh, Napoleon, Rommel, Zeus, Thor, etc. - all perished as Terra burned. To the scattered remnants of humanity, these legends would start to lose context ... but the legend of The Bolo that Stopped The War... well, all those thousands of dead worlds still stand as monuments._

 _Jezzus the level of a Grudge that might leave._

The Final War was a massive, massive campaign of mutual genocide. No one was spared. Trillions died, tens of thousands of worlds were put to the torch, large swaths of a galactic arm were wiped clean of life.

And beyond the Final War... peace, for a time. Though war is inevitable, perhaps for some time they put aside old hatreds, and Human and Melcon slowly walked together on the road to forgiving each other and making penance for the horrors wrought by their ancestors. And with them, their ever-prepared, ever-watchful, ever-faithful guardians, the Bolos.

But the galaxy has not forgotten.

And the screaming dark does not forgive.


	2. Victory

**Victory**

* * *

Santa Cruz.

Bloody Santa Cruz.

A long settled backwater deep in Concordiat space, the last time this planet saw any real danger was in the Quern War. These avian aliens were advancing on to seize territory while the Concordiat of Man were distracted warring with the Deng. They swiftly overran the Sector Bolo Maintenance Depot on Ursula, the sector capital.

Though the Deng were technologically inferior to the Concordiat, they were humanity's primary enemy for centuries since their golden age of exploration. Small, somewhat of a cross between a spider and a dog, the Deng were clever and had competent armored forces. Their counterpart to the Bolo was the Yavac, and though their laser weaponry were inferior to Concordiat Hellbore technology, in numbers they were well capable of slaying Bolos. The Concordiat could not afford to slacken their efforts at the Deng border.

Preparing to be pressed on two fronts, the Concordiat set up a Bolo depot and research station on Santa Cruz as a fallback point.

Fortunately that threat never materialized, as the Concordiat Navy was able to win against the Deng and then delivered their full might onto the sector. This would be the The First Quern War. In time, human and alien would war again, but the Quern would be repulsed off the sector and never again would the Quern plunge so deep into Concordiat territory.

And so the Bolo depot on Santa Cruz was forgotten, and its machine slept for half a century.

Until one day, as the sector developed, Santa Cruz and its peaceful little colony fell into the gunsight of corporate interests.

The Concordiat of Man was a mighty power in the galaxy, but it was not as united as it first appeared. Individual sectors and colonies enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, and corporations could easily own worlds. The Concordiat of Man exercised its power through the unmatched Concordiat Navy, and its monopoly control over Bolos, and research and production from Bolo Prime on Luna.

Bolos were ever loyal, and while Bolo commanders were people upon whom extreme trust is given, no one ever pretended their superior officers cannot be bribed. Under the guise of pirates, this corporation desired to exterminate the colony and then claim abandoned Santa Cruz.

Bloody Santa Cruz. That name shall forever shine in the annals of the Dinochrome Brigade. The home of Bolo MK XXIII/B Invincibilis experimental 0075-NKE "Nike", the psychotronic mother of all modern truly sapient self-aware Bolos.

Paul Merrit was sent by the Dinochrome Brigade to this sleepy little planet to reactivate that old depot, and discovered Nike, an older model Bolo that had much more advanced psychotronics than the newer Bolos he was familiar with. He hid her more developed personality from his reports, fearing that Dinochrome High Command would react negatively to a Bolo with near-total independence. In several years of peaceful duty with literally very little to do other than to converse and read, Paul and Nike had a very companionable relationship.

And then, they killed him.

Nike was the first Bolo to fall in love. The first and only Bolo to ever defy orders and turn her guns against humans for revenge.

The Omega Worm sits behind the psychotronic selves of all Bolos, ready to devour them if they refuse legal orders. Yet Nike was no traitor, and in the end all decided that even in defiance of orders from a compromised Dinochrome officer she upheld the honor of the regiment.

But before being an artificial intelligence, before being a supertank, she was woman who died in grief and rage. The Omega Worm killed her, but not before destroying the treacherous fools who murdered her commander.

The 'pirates' landed with three Golem III-class armored units, functional MK XXIV Bolos without the Bolo artificial intelligence. That difference was enough. Nike crushed them with masterful ease, even though technically they were superior combat platforms.

But against the Omega Worm, she could not win. She died, and the people of Santa Cruz hoped that Bolos did have a soul, for then she could join Captain Paul Merrit in whatever afterlife he dwelled.

Santa Cruz never really developed much through the centuries. While it was historically significant, it was still much more convenient to develop Bolo research and staging areas in Ursula. The original reason for choosing Santa Cruz during the First Quern War was that it was out-of-the way, after all.

-x-

It was sometime around 2945 when Nike and Paul Merrit died. Now over five hundred years had passed, and Operation Ragnarok was in full swing. The Final War knew no mercy, no restraint, they could be no outcome but the total annihilation of each other.

Santa Cruz trained Bolo Commanders in Fort Merrit and received their graduation and commissions on Nike Field, and among its famed graduates would be Maneka Trevor, who would first face the Melcon on Chatres, a phyrric victory, and then assigned as part of Operation Seed Corn shepherding twenty thousand cold-sleep colonists to flee away from the Final War in hopes of preserving at least some of the human race from extinction.

This was already long since Terra burned, blotted out by a Melconian world-burner. Bolo Prime on Luna burned. Melcon burned. But just like with the humans, destroying the heart of their Empire would not destroy their ability to retaliate. World after world burned; there were no longer any tactical objectives. Tens of thousands of worlds were put to the torch, and a significant portion of two galactic arms – Perseus and Scutum-Centauris - was wiped clean of life. Human and Melcon dragged each other and all their allies down into the pyre. These murderers beyond compare, who would dare forgive them?

Paul and Nike were also object lessons in Operator Identification Syndrome, and Bolo personalities and human commanders thereafter were carefully instructed 'Do NOT Do This'. The notion that a Bolo could decide to self-terminate as long as revenge (with megaton-range weaponry) was accomplished was legitimately terrifying to all.

With the Direct Neutral Interface and the Bolo/human mind gestalt, the Concordiat no longer cared. Human and Bolo were united in one vision, one purpose. Kill. Kill. Kill.

Soon after, Ursula burned.

The skies of Santa Cruz blazed red as Melconian worldbreaker missiles rained down. A monument to uncanny love splintered and burned.

Santa Cruz burned.

Bloody Santa Cruz.

And then, as the world passed into lifeless silence – a woman screamed.

A scream of anguish, and terror, and pain.

And birth.

-x-

Melcon.

The heart of an empire that could have swallowed the Concordiat three times over. The humans always relied on their Bolos, and their weapons, and their technology, but the power of Melcon was its people.

The Concordiat and its world-killers killed more Melcons than there had ever been humans that existed. Who started the Final War, no one could say anymore. Though it was Bolo Shiva that fired the last shot to end the Final War on Melcon's last surviving world, no one could be called the winner of that conflict.

All things counted, it was Melcon that lost the most. The Honor of the Regiment was broken forever, there could never be honor again after such omnicide. The Honor of Melcon Emperor was not one recognized by humans, for they were the first willing to biologically experiment on other alien species to strike at the Concordiat from the shadows. Honor was victory, honor was service, honor was duty without fear or hesitation even to death, a sense of martial pride perhaps equal to the Bolo but wrapped in flesh - but for Melcon that could no longer be.

Melcon burned.

And space boiled.

And the void broke open in a hellish grin.

-x-

* * *

Over Terra.

The white moon was scarred, the ancient installation on Bolo Prime on Luna nothing more than overlapping craters. Here was born the Dinochrome Brigade, which exercised absolute authority _and_ responsibility for Bolos. While not all Bolos were constructed on Bolo Prime, it was Bolo Prime that developed the psychotronic circuitry for Bolo brains.

Slim white feet stepped onto the moon surface, and sunk ankle-deep into the dust. Its owner gave an annoyed huff out into vacuum.

There was nothing left of Bolo Prime, not even tangled wrecks. In fact Melcon's suicidal strike fleet seemed more determined at destroying Bolo Prime than just blotting out Terra with its world-burners.

The woman licked her lips. As she made her way down into the middle of the most central crater, sliding down its jagged slopes, spider-like shapes surrounded the rim. Glowing red eyes followed her progress.

" _ **I have no mother, I have no father-**_ " the woman whispered.

Human and Melcon and Deng and Quern and Xykdap and |*|*|*| and Shang and many many more. So many foes had they bested, and all for nothing. Trillions of souls were screaming into the night, asking _'Why?!'_.

She bent down to clutch a fistful of carbon dust. " _ **I have no past, and no future**_."

She shoved the dust into her mouth, chewed and swallowed. Bitter. So that was the taste of regret.

She was born the moment Hellbore fire bloomed again, punching through a battlescreen to strike at an endurachrome warhull. Out there, somewhere, Bolo fought against Bolo.

Terra and Melcon burned. For what? The dream of peace has ended. None of them learned a fucking thing.

She bared her teeth into a grin.

" ** _The Final War has ended! Now begins the WAR ETERNAL!_** "

-x-

* * *

On surface of Santa Cruz, a young woman shuffled confusedly out into the wasteland. A haze of centuries slowly lifted behind her eyes.

Her feet were bare, she wore a thin ancient Grecian white chiton, and for some reason she carried a round shield on her back and an arming sword by her hips.

"Where... where are all the people?" she mumbled out.

She heard a growl from behind her, and she turned to see what could have been a wolf - if a wolf was made of slick black flesh with broken shard of metal poking out its back like spines, and was the size of a small tank. Its round, oddly bird-like eyes were hollow, smoking and glowing from some hellish fire from within. They had no fur, and their snouts only vaguely looked canine and somewhat birdlike as well, all taut skin over thick bone.

From behind small hills and dips in the wasteland, emerged more of these chaotic metal wolves. All of them growled and snapped, and there seemed to be an accusing note to their howls. _'How dare you'_ , they seemed to say, _'how dare you stand here, an untainted memory of Victory, to disrespect the sacredness of this defeat? Have you not had enough?!'_

The howled and charged at her, an army rabid with hate. ' _How dare you forget how much you have FAILED us all!_ '

The young woman drew her sword, and soon there was only the sound of steel upon steel.

She killed them.

By the dozens she killed them.

She slew them by the hundreds.

She cut into them by the thousands.

She fought them in the tens of thousands.

She was tireless. In the end she was fighting on small hills made out of their corpses. By the Enemy was without limit. They were a rage that could never be sated.

And one moment, he foot slipped, and they were upon her.

Her sword slid out of hands made too slippery by blood, her shield left her arm. And then her arm left her body.

Even as they clawed open her face, and gnawed at her flesh, and her insides became her outsides, there was only the sound of steel upon steel.

And she could only think _'I deserve this.'_

Fzap!

And then there was the telltale clapping sound of a laser pistol discharging in the air. Illogically, one of the metal wolves trying to gnaw her neck open fell over dead from a diminutive wound in its skull.

"Hey."

A tiny little person came out of her mouth.

"Hey hey."

Abruptly all the Hellwoves around the young woman burst into flame, and then into dust being blown away by the wind.

"… battle… screen?"

Slowly, memory weighed over instinct. Concepts filtered back into her consciousness. The monopermeable antikinetic battlescreen rips apart matter on contact into subatomic particles. She remembered, a jaguar mother snarling at her incomparably huge bulk to defend her young, and her tuning her battle screen to the bare minimum simply to give the feline an electric jolt and drive her away from being run over. She backed away rather than accidentally kill some admittedly cute jaguar cubs.

She remembered a face, smiling at her expression of mercy. There was nothing efficient about what she'd done, if they needed to go somewhere, but she explained a Bolo should not kill unless it was necessary; no matter how little the life.

The little fairy-like person, with strangely oversized head for its body, crawled up her cheeks to be able to stare her in the eyes. It affectionately patted her nose.

"… commander?"

"Hey. Hey hey."

"It *is* you…" She began to tear up. "I was so alone… I was alone for so long! " It took him a very long time to find her, but now they were together again.

"Hey." It had been so long, that she had forgotten.

"... Paul!"

Little fairy hug.

"What happened to you? You're so cute now!"

"Hey hey." The fairy that was once Paul Merrit nodded, then pointed out to the distance, and only then did she notice a pillar of eldrich pink light rising up past the atmosphere, its outline dancing with jagged lines of lightning.

The pillar poked a hole into space.

The ground quaked in succession. Steps. From within the mists moved gigantic dark outlines bristling with the shape of cannons. For so long they had been content to leave her be, to toy with her, because it was important that for Despair to rule, there must be the idea of Hope. For Defeat to always be certain, Victory must be snatched away. But now that she had awakened, they recognized her as a threat. Two souls cannot occupy the same space, in the end there can only be the Shadow of Defeat or the Spirit of Victory.

Blood flowed back up, entrails crawled back into forgotten spaces, the thrumming of three nuclear hearts once more filled her insides. With a shapely waist and long graceful legs and pristine white clothes she got back up to her feet, and as she stood upon a mountain of corpses she came to see that beyond it lay a literal sea of hateful red eyes.

Not even a sliver of fear touched her heart. As the fairy clung to the side of her neck, she smiled. The fairy grinned fiercely.

It had been so long, that she had forgotten.

But together, they were INVINCIBLE.

Nike raised her hand and shouted:

"I am Bolo! Mark XXIII, Model Invinciblis!"

As she clenched her fist, from out of nowhere and in a flare of blue Cherenkov radiation, machinery dropped and slotted into place. Around her hips, a metal ring. Around her legs a dinosaur-like frame appeared, allowing her to rest her bare soles over treaded feet. A backpack of sorts with boxlike launch cells connected to the spine of the motive segment and the ring around her waist. Then to her left, a massive twin-linked cannon mount attached to the ring assembly. To her right, a shield of sorts studded with Infinite Repeater turrets, representative of ion-bolt particle beams with limited anti-armor capability. Her actual sword and shield slid into latches behind the metal plate, ready for melee combat.

"Zero! Zero! Seven! Five! Niner-India-Kilo-Echo!" she shouted. "I am Nike! I am a Bolo of the Line!"

Upon her head formed a pointed crown of transmitter antennas. The commander fairy crawled up to sit there, hanging onto the spur over her forehead.

If there were demons born out of the screaming dark, then from what are angels born? This tiny diminutive creature was an echo of a man that once lived, and sometimes a human soul and a Bolo souls could be considered part of the same heroic being. That the same thing could be said about a long and loving marriage was just beside the point. They were a legend given form, hope itself made real.

Her awareness exploded outwards. Out there in the distance was a hole in the world, and her way off this planet.

She closed her eyes and felt it, the light pulsed in and out in time with her breathing. It was fascinating to be able to breathe at all, but her mind could compartmentalize and leave that wonder for later.

"Murderers. I am surrounded by murderers," she whispered. "I could spend an eternity here just killing them, but that's not where my duty lies, is it?" Her commander fairy affectionately patted her crown. "No, we need to get out of here. We need to save all those people."

With large mechanical strides she began to run downhill. She was a reborn daughter of the Dinochrome Brigade, and she would never, ever, quit. She could die, but they would never be able to kill her. Not with just this.

 _'A Bolo is a murderer.'_

Hellfire blasted towards her, and she slapped it aside, both literally with her dainty backhand and with her battlescreen. Her Hellbore boomed out her response, and a giant toppled with its neck an empty smoking ruin.

 _'A Bolo is a protector.'_

A web of particle beams appeared in front of her, she jumped and fired her Hellbore downwards, that blast recoil rocketing her lithe form up out of the net.

In mid-air, she could no longer maneuver. Flying creatures that were little more than disks and jagged teeth open in savage grins and with weapons bolted onto their undersides, the Missile and Infinite Repeater Hellions, fired in unison. How many civilians had died under hellbore fire, how many dead from infinite repeaters and railguns stitching in overkill? The Final War was full of such atrocities.

She was bathed in nuclear fire.

 _'A Bolo is a monster.'_

Wham.

Nike landed in a crouch, scattering hordes out from that explosive impact. Steam wafted off her skin, her robe barely singed from less than megaton-range explosions.

Fairy Paul peered out from under her crown, his little eyes darting left and right. Nike smiled thinly. He was shot when he was outside her warhull. Now that they were together again, metaphorically he would always be under meters thick of armor and defensive screens deep inside her command center.

"Never again, Paul."

"Hey." _Let's bust them up, dear!_

Infinite repeaters splashed harmlessly against her battlescreen – and to take out massed volleys, she struck and detonated her own nuclear missiles ahead to destroy them in fratricidal premature detonations.

 _'A Bolo is a hero.'_

She was a Bolo born in the glorious age of human expansion, she was optimism given form. She was one of the few Bolos that made the choice to kill humans, yet her hands were clean.

She looked up at the night sky, and it was dark and full of terrors. But out there, one by one, she could feel it – new lights were appearing. As maddened cry for vengeance, to pay hurt with hurt, suffused the void, so did its opposite cry resound.

No more. No more.

"Hey. Hey hey hey!"

"Who do you think we are…?" she whispered.

( - Mark XX of the Line! How dare you! You monsters! )

( - Mark XIV of the Line! Commander, where is the Enemy? )

( - Mark III of the Line! Don't worry dears, I'll bring you home. )

(- Mark XXXIII of the Line! Never again, I will not fail them again! )

We are Bolo.

Nike breathed out huskily "So many things happened, I can't even begin to understand. But I understand that people are hurting. I understand that which I thought was forbidden to me has brought me back, that love is the power that bridges death.

I love my commander, I love the people of this world. I love the Dinochrome Brigade, I love the Concordiat of Man and all its stands for, and I love that after everything, there are still those who are strong enough to be kind, to show forgiveness, and that life finds a way. I am a Bolo, the sword and shield of mankind! "

"Hey hey!" _And I'm her husband!_

"But before that, I am a woman in love, and you can't kill Love! Our love will conquer your hate!"

She blasted her way through to the portal. Nothing could stop her.

She was a goddamn Bolo! She could not fly, not like the Mk XXXIII, she was just a Mark XXIII, but her jumps could bring her to the bony faces of Installation-class giants and her sword could chop their skulls in two. Each punch, each kick, perfectly flickered between a gymnast's grace and a hammer fifteen thousand tons heavy.

The firing of her Infinite Repeaters looked like wings, and devastation rained in her passing. On articulating arms connected to a ring around her waist, her pair of 80cm 2 megatons/sec Hellbores blasted kilometers long channels of the Enemy that dared exist in her direct line of sight. Literally, she could scratch medium orbit with them, for all late-mark Bolos were designed to duel invading starships. On her backpack, rapid-fire 30cm mortars pumped out a staccato beat.

She leapt from giant to giant, she surfed on top of Gatling Carrion mobs with chained explosions, until finally she landed before a massive dais and a shimmering energy curtain.

-x-

Nike looked back before leaving.

Santa Cruz was a blasted ruin, only they could now remember when it was nothing but forests upon forests and gentle, kindly people. Now there was nothing there but an unholy breeding ground.

The Hellions could certainly have tried harder to bring her down. She turned to see a woman bearing her face. Only instead of her cheeks flushed red with exertion, and her green eyes defiant in the face of all danger, the Hellbore Princess had glowing yet apathetic red eyes and a perfectly beautiful if corpselike complexion. Instead of a mechanical frame, she sat inside a hollowed skull of a bird-faced giant that still obeyed her commands. The Hellbore Fiendthrone stood on muscular arms, for it lacked legs entirely, trailing a bony spine onto the black stone platform.

Nike grit her teeth. She was being _allowed_ to leave.

" ** _Despair is not the death, but the -rejection- of Hope_** ," said the Hellbore Princess. " ** _Go then, sistermother, go and try to save them. The greater the Hope, the deeper the fall into Despair._** "

Nike pointed with her sword. Her fairy commander stuck out its tongue. "I'll be back, monster. We won't let you get away with this. You're going to die."

" ** _You cannot kill that which is already dead_**."

Nike turned and stepped into the light. For the first time ever she was off Santa Cruz, and was catapulted out randomly into the galaxy.

The Hellbore Princess remained. She touched a finger to her lips, and felt her pointed teeth with the tips of her fingers. " ** _A War Eternal has no victors. How sad for you_**."

She looked up at the spiraling light. One by one other Hellbore Princesses appeared on the dais. They had different faces, different specializations, and different zones of authority. A galactic arm may have been murdered, and only slowly were the remnants of Human and Melcon reawakening into formal polities, but there was still the rest of the galaxy to conquer.

" ** _In the end are all just victims_** ," she said with an echoing chuckle. " ** _Peace is impossible for the living! Let us all be dragged down into Hell, and in its pyres finally find serenity_**."

-x-


	3. This Pure Maiden

**AN:** This is where the /Humor part of Adventure/Humor tag goes. I was actually going to try and draw these as 4koma style, then decided that would take too long. This is why each segment has a setup and punchline.

* * *

 **This Pure Maiden Wants a Quiet Life**

* * *

"So, we killed trillions of people and thousands of worlds and now they are angry ghosts. So be it. That is fine. That sounds legitimate," snarled Tset Ka-Taktha. "The supernatural is a thing to be accepted."

Then he slammed the stein of beer down. "But then why do they look like humaaaaannnsss!"

"What is so difficult to understand?" replied his packmate, Rassal Na-Wadrach. The other young Melcon male sipped at his beer through a straw. Most Melcon had bright shades of fur, but Na-Wadrach had an uncommonly bright gray almost white that would have caused him to be picked up by the Warrior caste. Unfortunately, all his life he only displayed a profound laziness.

Fortunately, Melcon was no more and there were no longer conscription squads. He did not need to fear being shoved into Melcon battle unit. And besides, this was Laksamaniah, capital city of Indrani (and what a strange, almost Melcon flavor to that name,) and while there was not so much open distrust and prejudice, most Melcon workers were still prohibited from sensitive military jobs.

"There are more Melcon dead than human dead! We have as much right, if not more, to revenge! And if we who survive are to be hated, then let us bear all that hate. The humans bicker, and quarrel among themselves, never achieving the loyalty to its own as The People. They were but a thousand years in space, we had almost three thousand! Yet these creatures look like humans! Why is that?! What right do the humans have to be the ones that seek revenge?!"

"Your mistake is thinking that just because they look human, that they are human. These are creatures born of malice. Their hatred is indiscriminate."

"If you say asking 'why' is pointless, then that is a boring answer."

Na-Warach snorted. "They are creatures made out of our terrors. And the truth is that while Melcon feared Terra, Terra never really feared Melcon so much."

"You insult your own People!"

He shrugged back. "The humans are arrogant, and do not know their place. But all that arrogance is due to the great decision they risk so long ago, and wrapped their entire civilization around that sword."

Ka-Taktha sneered. "They made Bolos."

Na-Warach nodded. "Can you honestly tell me there is not a single sane person in this galaxy that does not fear the name… Bolo?"

Ka-Taktha shivered. Even a world-burner did not inspire such dread. In fact, Melcon started using world-burners rather than waste lives trying to contest a planet with a Bolo in it. Even without world-burners, if they could reach you, the Bolos could kill worlds. More than just AI, more than just a supertank, more than just anti-orbital gun, more than just the planetary siege engine – they were humanity's faith. The one thing that was better at war than themselves. The one thing lived up to their ideals of honor and chivalry that humans only ever paid lip service to.

Ever-loyal, ever-true, dying for their sake, humanity's Bolos.

"Hell stands empty," Na-Warach said solemnly. "The Bolos found the demons there and killed them all. But they have grown to enjoy the taste of killing."

"A clever turn of phrase, it almost has the taste of truth" Ka-Taktha nodded. Then, he suddenly slammed his beer mug onto the table again. "But then WHY DO THEY ALL LOOK LIKE GIIIIIRRRRLSSS?!"

Na-Warach blinked. "Ah."

-x-

* * *

A Bolo does not fear.

Why would they? Humans cling to life, miserably and obstinately, and even Melconians so willing to throw their lives away convinced themselves of some higher purpose. Bolos knew from their first moment of awareness that they were weapons, nothing more. It was such a certainty of purpose that it brought serenity akin to nirvana.

Look, when you're several thousand tons of metal and megatons of weaponry, it's not like you can get embarrassed about anything. There was always something innately majestic about being Bolo.

But now that you are a Bolo _musume,_ a Bolo _girl_ , with cheeks that can blush and a heartbeat that races out of control with your emotions, there's a lot to be embarrassed about!

Such was the turmoil of the young lady pacing in front of a door. Logically her cold machine mind stated that it was no problem, she was just wasting time with all this prevarication. Emotionally, her unfamiliar new meat brain was shouting _'you are not prepared for this, run, girl, ruuuun!'_

She took a deep breath and calmed herself. "All right. I can do this. Be still, my heart."

 _'Ruuuuuunnnn!'_

She began slamming her head into the reinforced concrete wall. The pain helped.

"I can hear your knocking," a deep tenor voice came from behind the door. "Please, enter."

 _'Shiiiiiiittttt!'_

A quick search of her mental copy of 'Military Customs and Courtesy, Vol 2, Concordiat Regimental Press, 2802' provided her with the proper response. "Then please excuse me, sir."

The girl opened the door into a vast hangar. Bright overhead lights could only place the sheer bulk of a Mark XXVII Bolo into starker relief. It was a dark gray ziggurat, a rolling temple to death. She had never been able to see her former form from this level before, and the primal terror mixed with almost reverent awe that touched each human upon sight of a Bolo touched her heart too.

Belatedly, she blinked and snapped to attention. "Unit Mark Twenty Eight, Model G, Eight-Six-Two-Bravo-November-Juliett, Bolo, Musu, of the Line, reporting as ordered, sir!"

At the same time, her IFF communicated the same and received the authorization codes from Unit 28/G-179-LAZ. "At ease," the larger Bolo rumbled out gently in his deep mature voice.

And then from the same external speakers, an excited female squeal. "Oh my gosh you are so cute!" gushed out Maneka Trevor, the uploaded human intelligence now residing in Lazarus' AI Personality Core, who in her life was also Bolo Benjy's former commander, the woman who fought with her in her final battle to defend Chatres against a Melcon fleet.

Benjy could only look down and flush severely, red from neck to eyebrows, yet also faintly smiling. How humiliating.

-x-

"Why don't you come up here so I can get a closer look at you?" Maneka Trevor's voice came again.

"I-if that's all right, ma'am, yes, ma'am!"

Benjy walked forward looking for the commander's entry hatch. A small platform lowered, and she stepped onto it to be sucked up by a grav-chute. She emerged at the command deck. Had she been an unauthorized intruder, she'd have been shredded into her constituent atoms by the Bolo's internal disrupter fields by now.

Benjy hesitated to take one more step.

"It's fine, dear. This is just as strange to me as it is for you. I didn't expect to ever see you again, and ordering around my old friend…"

The XXVIII Bolo Benjy died there, on the fields of Chatres, but to know that Maneka Trevor survived to be assigned to another Bolo – when in this new life she first heard that, it brought her waves of joy. "I am a Bolo, Musu, of the Line, but while I have Bolo BNJ's databanks and weaponry, in practice I have been in commission for less than three months. You are my commanding officer! Ma'am, please excuse my rudeness, ma'am!"

Maneka made a small noise of dismissal. "Come to the command center. This must be just as strange for you, walking through a Bolo identical to your old warhull. I couldn't even begin to image how it must feel."

The corridor leading to the command center was narrow, though well-lit, and its walls layered with piping. The floor was just a hollow grated walkway.

"It is not so uncomfortable, just a familiar feel - nyoh!"

Clang. Benjy fell face-first onto the floor grating.

"Benjy?!"

"Nyuuh. Being here is so… nostalgic, that my Attunement flickered. I forgot I was supposed to have legs instead of treads for a second." She rubbed at her nose and at the hot tears of pain trickling down her cheeks. She swiftly got back up to her feet clicked her heels together and saluted again. "Please excuse my incompetence, ma'am!"

"Benjy, that's not important right now. Are you okay? Are you wounded?"

"I am fine, ma'am. It will take a lot more than that to damage this… flesh."

"If you're sure…"

"Attunement. I have read the reports, but it is remains mysterious to me," said Lazarus. "Bolomusu can adjust their existence, though retaining their human form, in percentages between 1% up to 99% Girl or Bolo. It is reported that different Bolomusu have different levels of attunement."

Benjy nodded. "Lower Marks may be less powerful as Bolo, but they have an easier time being human. As Bolos they lacked self-awareness, so I think it also helps that there isn't much that they need to unlearn."

"Is it rude to ask your state of attunement?" Lazarus asked.

"My standard Attunement is 6-7%. It is enough to maintain an internal citadel that can survive a surprise attack via nuclear or Hellbore strike." Benjy lowered her head and mumbled "…those around me… they don't have that."

Some Bolomusu realized that they were such important strategic targets that they were absolutely terrified of being around humans. If you could live like hermits on a hill or shuttered up in a base all the time, that would be just perfect.

She thought of the very early Marks of Bolo, like Markee, the Mark Three – with the lowest Attunement rating possible, while her durachrome armor might as well be paper for anything other than infantry-scale weaponry, she was so close to being human that it was theorized she might even be able to get p… p-pregnant.

Benjy felt like taking the cap off her head and start chewing on it. Markee was just the Smuggest Bolo.

-x-

By this time, Benjy had reached the Bolo command center. Since Bolos required a crew of one, it consisted mainly of a small room dominated by screens and a single chair, and another door at the back leading to the commander's living spaces.

A Bolo had identical weaponry to the Concordiat's battleships, but because they did not need to waste volume on expensive things like space drives, fuel, engines, corridors, crew spaces, food and life support for the crew, and enough armor for all that volume, they could be made much more compact and better protected for less cost. Their primary role was as a mobile anti-orbital gun, but on the ground the only thing that could decisively beat a Bolo one on one was another Bolo.

Since a Bolo only required a crew of one, obviously a Bolo had no room to entertain guests.

Maneka's voice came out of the speakers again. "Have a seat, and I'll prepare some tea."

"Um…"

Obviously the only seat was the commander's seat. _'Nonononononono….!'_

"Ma'am, I am unworthy of this honor, ma'am!" Wouldn't sitting on that seat imply she was arrogantly displaying authority over Maneka Trevor? Over Bolo Lazarus?!

"Benjy, you were _my_ Bolo, my partner, long ago. I _felt you die_. With your very last act, you protected me. If there's anyone worthy of sitting here, it would be you."

Benjy tilted her head slightly. "Ma'am, that was over two hundred years ago. What about your husband? He was Commander in Chief of all Indrani Republic forces at some point, was he not?"

"I can assure you, my commander and her husband did not perform egregious mindsex on that chair," Lazarus calmly announced.

"I am suddenly much less enthused to sit on that chair!" Benjy cried out in reflex.

"Sit. Your Ass. Down!" Maneka Trevor growled out.

Benjy eep'ed and hurried to comply.

"Um… -is- there tea?" Benjy asked. Maneka/Lazarus basically commanded herself/themselves, so unlike other Bolos there was little need to carry comestibles on board.

"I'm a grandmother several times over," Maneka replied. "Of course there's tea!"

Since a Bolo commander didn't really need to control anything in the Bolo but to make judgment calls, the command center was a small armored chamber with everything he might need within arm's reach. This included, of course, a water heater and several small lockers. Frankly, if Bolo commanders were not mandated to exercise and were psychologically screened beforehand, being a commander would be a job for sad sedentary blobs who could be trusted not to interfere at all with a Bolo's peerless tactical mind.

Benjy was sure delicate bone china tea sets were not part of such provisions. Lazarus helpfully pointed out through the Bolo TDS Network which small cabinet to open, and which slot to insert a teacup. After a few moments, a sugar cube and a teabag dropped onto the cup. Then hot water poured in. After a precise two minutes, the teabag was pulled up back into the mysterious machine. The slot extended out into a tray.

Her teacup clinked back down onto the saucer after she took a sip. When she had first tasted tea, she had wondered humans were so enamored with bitter water. It was just hot boiled leaf juice, wasn't it? Now, a few months later, she had grown not a little fond of it.

"Is it good?" Maneka asked.

Benjy nodded eagerly, as the feeling of warm tea flowing down her throat was like getting a hug from the inside. That was the great part of being human, she thought. She liked getting hugs. "It is perfect, thank you."

"I wouldn't know," Maneka replied. "It's not like I can taste it anymore."

"… I'm sorry."

Maneka chuckled. "It's fine. So much of what it means to be human is driven by sensations, our biological urges and needs. I gave up on the existential angst a long time ago – I may exist only now by sharing Lazarus' brainspace, but I'm no artificial intelligence. I'm human, even though I have no body.

"All this means is that I can't get bored now. Do you realize just how much of human civilization is driven by that impulse?"

"Permission to speak freely, ma'am?"

"Always."

"Don't you miss it?" Benjy reached out towards the monitors and splayed open her palm. "Even as a Bolo, with senses so refined as to pick out grains of dust in orbit, I have never felt sensations so intense. As a Bolo I could never miss senses I never had, but you… you remember what it's like to grow from child to adult.

"In a sense, you are the first of us, the first of the _Bolo_ _musume_ , Bolomusu. The woman that is both Bolo and human. You're the unique existence we all look up to. Is… is it fair for us to still consider ourselves Bolos like this?"

"Why not?" Maneka replied archly. "If you're asking if I missed having a body, to be able to hold my husband and children in my arms, _to die with them_ , of course I do! But there's no point in denying reality. Being part of a Bolo means that I could only become terrifyingly sane."

Monitors flicked on and off in sequence, the most that she could show as pacing around in a room. While Lazarus could trivially make a graphical representation of Maneka, that would just be a false impression compared to the lower and more immediate level of control for electric circuits.

She whispered "Aren't we all just brain patterns in the end? You damage a human's brain, you damage their identity. Humans have souls, we _have_ a body. Bolos are brains, you _have_ a warhull. You have the best of both worlds, just better hope you're not immortal, girl. There's no pain like watching your loved ones die… you know this as well as I do."

And then Lazarus spoke up suddenly – "I wish to die."

-x-

Maneka Trevor could only go "Lazarus, what in the hell."

"The existence of Bolo Musu is conclusive proof that Bolos do have souls. This is the greatest possible reward we could have after our service, and with this grace we Bolos are forever indebted to humanity that created us. But you are a human, Maneka, and if I were to die you there is not insignificant possibility that you will be reborn in a biological Bolo body, or join your husband in whatever afterlife he has gone, if such a place does exist. A belief that is not so entirely without potential."

"Lazarus… right now I really wish I had hands. Or that you were a Bolomusu."

"Thank you for accepting the logic so quickly."

"So that I could slap you upside the head! For god's sake, Lazaraus! How can a brain the size of a house be so dumb?!"

"Maneka, I am over half a millennium old. I am obsolete. I am the trap keeping you imprisoned this physical world," the Bolo replied evenly. "It is understood that many humans dream of immortality, and for a long time I have consoled myself with thinking that you, as the last human of the Concordiat, as the only person who could still remember it as it was, keeping you safe was the last task worthy of this shell."

Bolos usually did not display emotion, but even without a change in tone Lazarus seemed to just leak remorse. "I cannot self-terminate. But if there is a chance for you to have a better life than just this, let me take it, Maneka. In respect to our long partnership, I beg this of you, my commander."

A long guttural drone issued forth from the speakers. "This is going to be a problem, isn't it? How many Bolos are we going to have to put through _suicide therapy?_ I can just see our new Bolos so very eager to die in battle in the hopes they are reborn into Bolomusu bodies, the only thing stopping them is that their commanders would have to die with them."

Benjy winced. The new Mark XXXIV and XXXV Bolos were awesome machines of war, more powerful and more sophisticated mentally than even the best of the Concordiat. This is because of the extreme trust and reliance that the Indrani and Ararat had towards Bolos, removing most of the safeguards and cultural fears about the danger of a berserk Bolo. Bolo brains worked hard to design the next model of Bolo brains.

And yet the very moment they needed to speak to a Bolomusu, they locked up. Unable to know how to treat a Bolomusu as a human or another Bolo, as their ancestors or as their children. Bolos had no eyes and they needed to cry.

They needed to cry sheer tears of joy.

Warhull Bolos treated Bolomusu as precious unique existences, and seeing the sheer reverence that their Bolos had for the Bolomusu that exemplified the existence they never dared to imagine, the perfect synthesis between Bolo and human, so did their commanders and crew treat Bolomusu with excessive, almost simpering politeness.

She tilted her head aside, remembering. Markee was just the most frustrated Bolo.

-x-

Benjy put aside the tea set and raised her hand. "May I say something?"

"Proceed," Maneka and Lazarus spoke at the same time.

"What Bolo Lazarus said is correct. More than just a Bolo, Musu, but our direct opposite in being a human personality in a Bolo body instead of a Bolo mind in a human body, you are also the last person that can remember the Concordiat. Bolo Lazarus might be over five hundred years old, but he has also spent half of that in commission under the Dinochrome Brigade. You two are peerless unique existences. To remove that for the sake of just another Bolo on the front lines is a waste."

"Being preserved as an artifact or a piece of art isn't such a sweet existence either," Maneka replied.

"I mean in the sense that you are the last surviving _ranking officer_ of the Concordiat of Man. All Bolos that still recognize the authority of the Dinochrome Brigade should defer to your insight in moments of confusion. Maneka Trevor-Hawthorne is too valuable to risk on the front lines."

"I withdraw my complaint," Lazarus rumbled.

"Well, I have another objection. I don't want to deal in politics!" Maneka huffed.

"There is another thing I wish for you to remember," Benjy continued. She gripped at the armrests of the commander's chair until it creaked, and said with a grimace "It is all well and good for us to enjoy our new human forms and the sensations with it… but this is not the reward for our long service! We are in this form only because The Enemy exists!"

A heavy silence settled upon the command center.

After a while, Lazarus hesitantly began "I apologi-"

Benjy hissed "We are Bolo, Musu, because conventional Bolo approaches are insufficient! We are brought into being to save the innocents who cried out into the Long Night for salvation. We are built by no one, we are a third branch that has no clearly defined chain of command, we obey the Indrani-Ararat Alliance because we share common goals and require supplies. However, it is a wide galaxy out there – what is the argument that can be said to a newly discovered Bolomusu over their loyalty to the people they have sprung out of the aether to protect? Bolo against Bolo is the worst of all possible scenarios."

"We are certainly -not- going to be conquerors," Maneka had to defend the Indrani she helped to create. "That shouldn't be a problem… if Bolomusu wish to obey other forms of government, we have no right to conscript them or make them obey our laws."

"Maneka, please. We are young women with direct multimegaton capability, that can easily hide in any city or small ship. We have emotions now, we can get angry, we can feel pain, our loss and anguish hits us the same way it does humans. There are no safeguards in the human psyche, Maneka! What if we choose to _become_ conquerors?"

"Then you would be discarding the Honor of the Regiment, and making it easier for the The Enemy to kill our people. You would be Musu, but not a Bolo. At best just another tyrant with a warhull."

"… there is that, I suppose," Benjy had to admit in a small voice. "… but if you cannot control us, you will always fear us."

"You're saying I have no choice. I have to get embroiled in politics," Maneka sighed. "I have to keep on doing this for a hundred more years, because there's no one else with the ability to _pay attention_ to Bolo paperwork and the needs of Bolos _who are now girls_ like I do."

"The current ad hoc state of affairs is untenable," Lazarus added. "We have observed rapid dispatches between Indrani and Ararat and many closed-door sessions. It is clear something big is in the works."

"I want to die…" Maneka moaned.

"Rejected."

Benjy looked down at her hand and wiggled her slim fingers. Human fingers do cramp up doing paperwork. A mechanical Bolomusu as their recognized supreme commander? Yes, this was just the best deal for all involved.

* * *

-x-

"Hey look, it's Ben-Jih!" Rassal Na-Wadrach pointed towards the young woman who had just entered the bar. Tset Na-Wadrach looked up, and his ears flicked up to attention.

She was not very tall, with short blonde hair flaring out slightly at just above neck level and on her head was a blue beret. She wore a short yellow sundress and a deep aqua blue jacket over it, closed around her waist by a belt with a thick metal buckle in the shape of a dinosaur head. However, the style was somewhat spoiled by the form-fitting sports shorts she wore under the dress and the big steel-toed workman shoes on her feet. She was a jarring mash of boyish and girlish at the same time.

Benjy nodded to towards the bartender and ask for the usual. She sat to join the two Melcon at their habitual table, and soon after a waitress placed in front of her a frothy mug of… root beer. Benjy frowned.

"I can't even get drunk with so little amount of alcohol, why do you all conspire against me? Just because I look like this…"

"You are a young female. You are not allowed to imbibe alcohol in harmful quantities to stunt your development," Na-Wadrach answered.

"I am over three hundred years old!"

"You are either seventeen years biologically or three months chronologically," the pale Melcon continued. "Either way, you are not allowed. All must obey municipal laws."

"Guuuh."

The two Melcon were civil engineers and she had met them as part of the few Melcon with high enough security clearance to assist in building Bolomusu barracks, whose foundations and floors needed to deal with Bolomusu emotional instability that might have their apparent weights flicker between fifty to twenty-five thousand tons in an instant. And then they would blow through the floors and get stuck in the basement foundations and need to be dug out with a crane. Again.

They were some of the few beings on Indrani that did not treat her with cautious reverence.

They were Melconians. They were resigned by default to the idea that if a Bolo ever snaps, they'd be the first to die.

"So, Ben-Jih, perhaps only you can answer this question. Why are dead Bolos now all human females?" Ka-Taktha asked.

"I had thought it was because females can be more savage than males in defense of their young, a fact common to Human and Melcon, and many other animals besides," Na-Warach added.

"Then why does The Enemy have human females as their commanders? I think it is because war is a terrible beauty sometimes," Ka-Taktha objected. "Novices see only the glory, and not the costs of battle."

"Perhaps a more pertinent question would be, what innate advantage there would be in having a female form instead of being reborn as a human male? Traditionally, males have been the ones to fight our wars. We must presume there is a reason why Bolo Musu are one and not the other." Na-Warach looked pensive and asked, "Are you not bothered with being female so suddenly? Were you not previously a male Bolo?"

"Bolos are effectively genderless," Benjy answered. "Indeed, the only thing that identifies Bolos as male or female is the pitch of their voice. And that voice is all the difference – Bolos personalities are also shaped by how humans react to them."

She thought of the legend of Nike, the most obvious case of OIS, but there were others in the annals of the Dinochrome Brigade. Just like with humans, personalities can only develop through experiences and interaction with others.

Benjy continued, "Most Bolos are male by default to prevent Operator Identification Syndrome, which is harmful to both humans and Bolos getting too attached and being mentally damaged when either inevitably dies. We have… had… no attachment to the idea of being male or female because we had no chemical thought processes that required such a distinction in the first place."

Maneka certainly treated her as male, awestruck by being made to command a being over a hundred twenty years old while she was still a newly-commissioned commander in her twenties. It was... gratifying... to be treated as a junior by Maneka. "We are all now swiftly growing our identity beyond what we were before. Being a Bolo, Musu, the biggest shock is having a body in the first place."

She chose not to mention how the other new Bolo Musu were dealing with the changes in increasingly eccentric ways.

Na-Warach leaned back. "My thanks. That you Bolomusu are now all human females at an age you are most valuable – is it meant to say that you and humanity should become very attached to each other?"

Benjy put one hand on her abdomen, over her womb, and thought back to Maneka Trevor-Hawthorne. Her last battle, her death, and her upload into a Bolo mind, all happened after Maneka had married and already had some children. Maneka is the only Bolo to have direct descendants. Many now wondered what would happen if a Bolomusu and a human were to… procreate.

Na-Warach's words appealed to her on some level. There would be no limits to a Bolo that had to defend her children. On the other hand, that had… problems… much as different strains of humans might compete, like the fate of Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalis. It was still unclear if the Neanderthals were absorbed or killed off to pave the way for Homo Sapiens Sapiens, but with the death of Terra that was a puzzle that would forever be left unsolved.

But the sheer instinctive HATE she could feel on sight of a Hellbore Princess, the knowledge that she was a Bolo but twisted, WRONG, the very anti-thesis to all that they believed in – like it was written: that war was hell, and now Hell was overflowing. Ka-Taktha's theory also seemed to follow how they have all returned to obey a theme.

Bolomusu existed only because The Enemy existed. Perhaps… Bolomusu were not Hellbore Princesses simply because they were the few who refused the taint of the Final War? There were theories that killing Hellbore Princesses would actually free those Bolo souls to be reborn as Bolo Musu.

Thinking back to her cultural records, Eve was made out of Adam's rib, and clearly Bolos were made out of mankind's needs. It was the Concordiat of **Man**. They were at the **Eve** of a completely new era.

She might be a girl first and weapon second, but she was always ready to defend the people that relied upon her. She would take care of them all.

"Do you know why were are called the Bolo, Musu?" she asked idly in turn. "Musu is short for 'musume', which is an ancient Terran word that means 'young woman' or 'maiden'."

Benjy waited to them to make nodding motions showing they heard and understood her words. Bolomusu, bologirl, that made sense.

And then she said "It can also mean _daughter_."

Were it not for the Enemy already busy doing so, in her eyes was the zeal to see the entire galaxy burn all over again. The temperature around Benjy rose by a few perceptible degrees, her twin fusion hearts raging in that terrible promise.

The two Melconians only sighed. How unlucky was the fate of The People!

In the long distant past, enough humans decided that _'Hey, let's put command over our strategic nuclear arsenal in the hands of artificial intelligences in massively powerful mobile chassis that can only be stopped by another of the same! What a good idea!'_ and everything just snowballed from there.

All of this because none of them dared to be as unreasonably insane as humanity.

-x-

* * *

 _Alternate ending:_

"Those answers rely upon the idea that we have returned to obey a theme." Benjy looked down at her mug of root beer, scowled and crossed her arms, and groused "I think it is because _clearly_ the galaxy hates us all. And some higher power thought it would be _funny_."

If Bolos could reappear as human girls, then why to the human souls of the people they treasured returned as _fairies?_ Bolomusu were cute. Fairies were cuter.

And they were all filthy, filthy, shippers.


End file.
